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live friday at 8:30 p.m. eastern on c-span. listen wherever you are using the free c-span radio app. towelcome kimberly leonard her desk. i want to start with the news that the obama care premiums are set to fail. >> the trump administration has taken so many actions that sabotage the law. premiums are going down for mid-level plans by about 4% next year. know that more health insurers are entering the marketplace, and we know it is happening

because of a variety of factors, one of which has to do with the trump administration authorizing funnelsnce, which federal funds to states so they can use those dollars to help them lower premiums. that helps lower the premiums across the board. hill, arday on capitol hearing about obamacare, about the affordable care act. it sabotaged the trumpet ministrations attack on health care. you explain what the democrats in charge of that hearing were pointing to? the democrats have been very focused to really bring forth obamacare, the affordable care act, to say that they are defenders of the law, and particularly it is really popular parts, including its rules protecting people with pre-existing conditions, allowances for young people to stay on their parents' health insurance until the age of 26,

and they wanted to point out that the trump administration has a lawsuit that they side and with republican states to law se invalidated, and that is a lawsuit that we are expecting to hear about any day now. they also point to actions the trumpet ministration has taken. they have reduced the amount of time that people can sign up for plans. the trump administration also stopped authorizing different payments that go to insurers. marketing for the health care laws. they reduced the budget around that. they reduced the budget around what are called navigators. so they have this long list of complaints that they wanted to put forward. definitely a political hearing and an opportunity for them to say to people and voters, here is what the trump administration is doing. host: one of the biggest complaints is the individual

mandate as part of the public and tax bill. concern that that would be a death blow to the affordable care act. how did that turn out? guest: it doesn't seem those predictions have turned out because a number of people on these plans has remained about the same. one of the things to remember about these plans is that there are millions of people who do get subsidies to pay for them. downif premiums go up or large portion of people that are really shielded from increases or decreases just because the federal government takes in so much money for them to pay for their premiums. it doesn't apply to everyone. this is something the trump administration likes to point out. if you are an individual making more than say $50,000 a year, you are looking at probably paying full price for these premiums. people that ends up being a third of their income or even half. and it's important to remember that how much people pay for these plans depends on a lot of

different factors. where they live, how much their income is, whether they smoke, and their age. all of those different pieces play into their ultimate premium prices. host: health care is our topic for the next 25 minutes for the "washington journal." if you have questions on that very broad topic we'll take your questions on phone lines for republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. start calling in now. kimberly leonard. i want to come back to that court case moving forward seeking to invalidate the affordable care act. explain the argument that the administration and those who have signed on to that case are making there. guest: what they are doing is they are actually using the tax law you were talking about earlier that zeroed out the fine on people who are uninsured, known as the individual mandate. and what they are doing is they are saying, the obama administration once argued that the fine was essential to making the rest of the law

work. now that it's been zeroed out they say at that means the rest of the law can't function. there were republican attorney attorney generals who sued to invalidate the law. and the trump administration sided eventually with the states to say that they believed the entire law should be thrown out. that affects a lot more than 209 million people who have been -- who has gained health insurance under the law. it also would undo protections for pre-existing conditions. t would affect different prescription drug pricing pieces. it really would reverberate across the health care system if the law were to be struck down. guest: hoip that case moving through the judicial system. if the affordable care act is invalidated, republicans this week have come up with a new health care plan, this from the conservative republican study committee. explain who they are and why

they put out a health plan this week. guest: they have 147 members. it was a little bit surprising they were releasing a health care plan. a lot of the strategy for the trump administration and frankly for a lot of republicans on the hill has been not to provide an alternative for health care but really to point out the flaws that they see within what democrats on the far left are proposing in terms of medicare for all. what they have done is they have introduced a plan that recycles a lot of the same ideas they had during the previous repeal and replace actions, but they have also kind of used it as a way to say, well, if the courts were to invalidate the a.c.a. or heading into 2020 here is our conservative vision for health care in this country. host: a few of the provisions in that, your screen now for our viewers. the proposal to establish federally funded state administered guaranteed coverage pools. repackaging some existing funding for a.c.a. premium

subsidies and medicaid expansion to fund state administrative programs. health savings accounts, tending legislation that provided protections to americans with job-based insurance to people in the individual market. just some of the points put out by the republican study committee on that plan. taking your phone calls on the health care issue with kimberly leonard of the washington examiner this morning. chat with loni out of washington, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning. i was curious what kimberly carries for insurance out of curiousity. i'm a vet and i have to use vet care. it's not that great. host: i don't know if you want to talk about your own insurance. guest: i have an employer plan like a lot of people in this country. about 160 million people. employer plans are very popular across the u.s. they do have a broad range of benefits, particularly for large companies. that's the kind of health

insurance i have. host: some democratic candidates wanting to make changes to the ability to have employer-based plans. can you talk about the democratic pryry field and the universe of plans being proposed right now? guest: there is a pretty broad range of proposals that have but really do question what the role of private health insurance should continue to be as he look at the next area of health care reform. you have candidates like joe biden who would like to boost the affordable care act, but also give people the option to buy into a government plan if that's something they choose. then you have elizabeth warren and bernie sanders who say, no. that would not be adequate. we need medicare for all. what they mean by that is that private health insurance would cease to exist and that everyone would be enrolled in a single government funded plan. and all hospitals and doctors would continue to operate privately. those are the different measures that are on the table.

host: new york is nefpblgts gary, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a comment and a question for miss leonard. the comment is that we have heard the myth for years that the canadians and the british, for example, hate their national health care system, but many of us for years have asked c-span, since those countries speak english, why don't we have a simple hookup and find out what the truth is? but over the years c-span has always refused. so that kind of tells me about the so-called -- host: i'm not sure what you are referring to. you are saying we should open the phones to canadian residents only and get their thoughts? caller: absolutely. absolutely. host: it's an idea. i'll bring it up. caller: not only canadian citizens, but talk to people up

in canada such as miss leonard that represents the press up there and find out what the truth is. host: let you explain what the washington examiner is so the caller knows about your publication. guest: we mostly cover domestic policy, but i have done stories looking at what other countries are doing. one thing that's important to point out is that the single payer systems in some of these other countries are very different than what bernie sanders and elizabeth warren are proposing for medicare for aufment they are looking at a much more again benefits package where people would not have to pay anything out of pocket for their health insurance. other countries that's not necessarily true. other countries there is also still a role for private health insurance. i agree, i think it's important to hear from people who reside in these other contrifments host: an interesting idea. dave out of michigan.

independent. good morning. caller: good morning. kimberly, i have a question the other former caller had it spoke a little bit about it. it seems to me like this country is having a problem getting everybody onboard if i'm not wrong. canadian people seem to be -- they are all in. y that i mean if you have an address, shouldn't be be accountable for certain amount of health care? if you have a student loan, part of the on to loan that's -- for your student loan? the canadians are on the right track it seems like, but it seems like we got to get rid of these co-pays. host: could he pays.

guest: one of the things about co-pays is some of these other countries do have them. they are smaller and don't have the big problems about out of pocket medical expenses. we report here. but they do -- economists see them as a way to make sure people aren't seeking unneeded health care in certain cases. people argue about what that means. certainly there is a problem with people delaying health care because they are concerned about how much it will cost. then when they do seek care, it's much more expensive because they are in an emergency situation. host: on medical expenses let's talk drug pricing and efforts by this congress to lower drug pricing. guest: there is a bill in the house now that was introduced by house speaker nancy pelosi that would allow the government to negotiate up to 250 drugs. it has a floor of 35 drugs. what they would do they would essentially use the price that is other countries pay to try

to set that price. it has been moving through committees. we have an initial c.b.o. score on it, but we are still waiting on a final score. that was going to get a vote next week, but i learned just this morning with my reporting that it's actually going to get a vote probably in november. that's been pushed back a little bit. host: why the delay? guest: there's obviously a lot happening on the hill right now. i do think that there has been sort of a tug of war with progressives in the house who would like to see the democrats become perhaps a little bit more aggressive on drug pricing than the current bill on the table. host: for all of kimberly leonard's scoops and reporting, it's washington examiner.com is the website. on twitter she's@lendardkl. if you want to follow her on twitter. that drug pricing bill named after the late elijah cummings, renamed that bill. it is now the elijah cummings lower drug costs now act.

guest: correct. all that is because during his time in congress he really pushed to allow the government to step in and negotiate drugs. so that's why they ended up naming it after him. he brought in pharmaceutical companies. he opened inquiries into their practices. it's supposed to be a nod to his legacy on drug pricing. host: elijah cummings, his casket will lie in state in stat warry hall coming up in just over an hour, about 70 minutes this morning is when those -- that ceremony is supposed to begin honoring the delight congressman from maryland. his funeral taking place -- honoring the late congressman from maryland. his funeral taking place tomorrow starget at 10:00 a.m. our coverage here today on capitol hill starting at 10:30 a.m. all eastern time. ohio, republican, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i thank you for having this subject on c-span.

my concern is with the drug issues that we have going on. i have been trying to get to change my drug insurance. the current one i have doesn't charge me the same thing twice for a prescription. i would like to get one that's consistent. to me it seems we have spent millions and millions of our taxpayer dollars trying to straighten this out and it needs to be insurance company reform not health care reform. if i have one drug that i get and i took a chart on it. the first time i got it was $169. second time was $30. third time i got it it was $69. now i just recently picked it up it was $129. my question is, why isn't it the same thing all the way through? that seems to be the case with all the drugs. with this particular subscription program i have. host: thanks for the question. tell us about your situation. guest: so true. that's something that we hear a lot. the drug industry has a very

complicated of not just pricing but also doing rebates. what you pay at the pharmacy will be different every time depending on your insurance, whether you are covered by a government plan. what the drug industry has tried to do is point people to places where they can get coupons to lower what they would pay at the drug counter. there have been more efforts by lawmakers to say, ok, pharmacists need to be telling people when they go to the pharmacy, look, you don't have to pay this for drugs, go to this website and get a coupon. that's how they tried to negotiate the way down what patients ultimately are paying for drugs. host: columbus, mississippi, next. jeffrey a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead, sir. caller: yes. the problem isn't the affordable care act. the problem when trump came into office and the problem's and he governors

republican-led senate in the states they came in and changed the way that states impose and took out the mandates out of the affordable care act. they gutted the affordable care act that made it unfair to people that had the affordable care act. and now you see how trump is trying to change the affordable care act into his care act. and i don't think that that's fair to american people that he would take something that president obama made and try to make it into something that he want to organize and said that's something that he orchestrated and made. host: kimberly. guest: we mentioned a little bit earlier some of the changes the trump administration had made to the affordable care act. another thing that i didn't bring up was how they have provided these plans that are retrothan the a.c.a. plans, known as short-term health insurance. they don't cover pre-existing conditions. so they can say to sick people

we won't cover you. they can say we are going to charge you xa more than what we would charge someone healthy. the trump administration has argued the people who go on these plans would otherwise be uninsured. because the affordable care act does leave out millions of people who are middle class who do not get subsidies, and for them a lot of the pre-existing conditions protections, because they can't afford these a.c.a. plans, are out of reach. that's the position that the trump administration has taken. democrats on the hill say that what should be done instead is that more people should be allowed to have subdies so that everyone would be able to have moreau bust coverage. host: insured in america, stats from the u.s. census bureau. the uni shured rate rose by 1.9 million from 2017 to 2018. the total number of ininsured was 27.5 million, 8.5% of the u.s. population. 5.5% of children under the age of 19 were uninsured.

that's 4.3 million total. what should folks know about those numbers? guest: the uninsurance rates have risen under president trump. there are a loft different reasons for that. one of the things we know about dirn children is a lot were previously on medicaid. which is funded by the government. what appears to have happened is that states have become a lot more strict about how they are checking who is eligible for medicaid and who isn't. they'll check it several times a year instead of just once. that has led families to be disenrolled from the program, which obviously also causes their children to be disenrolled. the trump administration notes as well, because there are different pieces of this, because the economy is doing well, people who might have qualified for medicaid before and in most states that's about $17,000 a year in income, now make too much money to qualify. so they are not necessarily getting out of medicaid and buying health insurance. they might instead just join

the ranks of the uninsured. host: mapleton, illinois. independent. good morning. caller: good morning. i first wanted to tell you i have had insurance my whole life. i'm 66. i retired at 50 from state police union. california. and so when i sit back and i look -- first of all i think everyone should have insurance because we are all going to get sick. i always thought that way. and there is no alternative that anybody is offering because what you just showed in that statistic is glaring because people don't know what it's like when they get sick nd you don't have insurance. i have never been without. these folks want to see it means you can get sick and nothing will help you. i don't consider that freedom. i don't believe what system we have, if you don't 25euk care of people now, like the old commercial used to say, take care of me now, take care of me later. you have a choice.

comment object that if you will. -- comment on that if you will. guest: one of the big vision behind the affordable care act was to make sure people would be covered so they wouldn't delay their care in order to go ahead and wait until they get sick to go to the emergency room and have expensive medical bills. one of the complications with health insurance is the fact that most people are pretty well most of the time. so they tend to think not that they are invincible but they won't necessarily face these massive medical bills that, frankly, a small proportion of the population faces. but they make up such a big amount of health care spending. so, that's one of -- in looking at the ways you approach universal health care coverage, there are a lot of different ways that could come about. so it's not necessarily -- we could go in a single payer

direction. we could go in the direction of giving people options. there are a lot of ways that could -- universal health care could be achieved if that's what the democratic candidates are able to persuade voters to move toward. host: san diego, larry, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning. three issues. like a comment on increasing competition, selling overstate lines. lowering costs by tort reform. and a menu of options versus plans forcing folks to buy things they don't need causing a trifecta of increases in co-pays, deductibilities,ibles, and premiums. ail take my answer offline. host: a lot there. guest: that is one of the complaints that some people have about a.c.a. plans is they feel like they can't use it for the coverage they might need regularly but then all the

other things that are hard to cover they wouldn't necessarily tap into. again with health insurance it's really hard to predict what might happen to you. you don't know whether you might come up with a devastating illness that takes away everything in your lifmente where -- in your life. where you have to quit your job to take care of it. tort reform hasn't gotten very much attention on the hill lately but it's something folks argue would help to reduce some of the health care costs. third item? host: selling plans over state lines. guest: the trump administration has worked on this. they have what's called association health plans. what those do is they allow people to group together who are within similar fields. let's say veterinarians all want to be on a big health insurance plan together. they would then be able to sign up for these association health plans, regardless which state they are in, to band together to get health insurance.

what that does is it helps smaller businesses or self-employed people to be able to negotiate health insurance rates that are more similar to large employers. host: florida, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: well. caller: i'm calling because i personally have gone through my job, 18 years ago, i covered seven people in my family for $25 a week. which was great. seven people all had medical insurance. as our kids grew, i had kids that turned out to have adhd and a.d.d. now i had to quit my job to homeschool one of our children. my husband's job covers him and our kids for free, which is great. but for him to cover me would

cost 3/4 of his weekly paycheck. i have even looked in the a.c.a. and just to cover me is $800. how are we supposed to afford costs like that? , myself, have to go to a free clinic just so i can get my asthma meds because my asthma's getting out of control as i get older. this isn't what america should be about. america should be about protecting its citizens in all ways, including health care. host: thanks for sharing your story. guest: this is the kinds of story that we hear all the time with the a.c.a. what she's talking about is something called the family glitch in the affordable care act. it's something that both sides acknowledge is a problem. democrats and republicans have different ways that they want

to overhaul the system so that this kind of thing doesn't happen where you have really expensive premiums. democrats would like someone in this situation to get government subsidies so that health insurance would cost her a lot less. republicans would prefer to give her the option to buy a plan that might be less robust but address perhaps the menus she might have that are specific to her. host: mark stone on twitter asks you to get into the cost of medicare for all. estimates, he says $35 trillion over 10 years. can you talk about those. want to know how candidates talk about it being free. even those that paid into medicare for 40 years pay $135 for part b supplemental prescription drugs, dental, and vision for $400 or more. guest: that's right. we do have a new analysis out about what medicare for all would cost. it comes from the urban institute. the 34 trillion is only the

additional federal government spending that would be necessary. this is according to their calculations. overall, that's over 10 years. over all everything taken together would cost closer to $59 trillion over 10 years. those figures obviously have they different. they would include taking what states pay, taking what individuals pay, taking what businesses pay, and putting it all under the federal government. candidates haven't really talked about how they would go about funding such a system. we doll know from the urban institute study that the $59 trillion is actually $7 trillion above what it would cost under the current health insurance system. it would be more expensive to cover more people and offer them more generous health insurance. a lot of the arguments from candidates we are hearing happen about how medicare for all would save money haven't been borne out in the studies

we have seen. however they may start to argue some of those points less in commerms of economics but in terms of reality and why as a country we have a responsibility to give people health care. i'll watch for that. host: a few minutes left with kimberly leonard of the washington examiner, their senior health policy reporter. all her stories available washingtonexaminer.com. alex in florida, pensacola. independent, good morning. caller: good morning. a little earlier about how some other plans and-n other countries also have -- host: alex, are you still with us? i think we lost him. elinwood, georgia. democrat, go ahead. caller: yes. 9 -plus years old. retired from the state of illinois. got a full plan, full medical, dental, optical, and health care. but here in georgia i observed since they cut out the people that was ban, the local house

bills, they are loaded with people walking into the emergency room. how much cost is that to the local taxpayers? guest: this goes back to what we were saying earlier about some of the vision behind the affordable care act and why they wanted coverage to begin for people earlier so you can watch medical conditions early as opposed to when they get much more expensive. we do know from data that it actually is more costly to insure more people earlier. however r however democrats -- however, democrats would argue that's not the reason to do t going back to the moral argument over health insurance, the studies we have seen about is it actually less costly? it might be less costly to the individual but the overall health care system it ends up being more expensive. there are those that argue that's an investment worth making. host: senior health policy reporter from the washington examiner, appreciate your time especially on a day you

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